LEGION (D-)
There is no way to start this review besides saying that Legion is a movie that needs to be avoided like the plague, or someone with leprosy, or Britney Spears' barber.
First off, I never wanted to see the movie (I blame you Derek), and in order to prevent others from doing the same I am going to straight bash this movie for the piece of garbage that it is. If you decide that I am probably wrong and still want to see Legion, don't read on because I will be discussing elements of this atrocious plot.
The setting of the film takes place in a run down diner with the focus of the story on saving an expecting mother's baby because it is the last hope for humanity. The people of earth are doomed because a god has lost faith in his people and sends his angels to exterminate them. Set on protecting the baby to be born is a disobedient angel named Michael. He goes against his master's decision to wipe out humanity by helping the occupants of the diner stand up to a legion of angels to save the soon to be born baby.
The script for Legion is so poorly written I honestly thought it was composed by a fourth grader with a green crayon until IMDB.com informed me it was constructed by the inexperienced writing team of Peter Schink and Scott Stewart. The movie was saturated with feeble dialogue and cliche one liners (gigantic negatives in my book).
The screenwriters were clearly not thinking while completely skipping over plot elements crucial to audience understanding. Why is the baby the only hope for humanity? If the baby is saved, why does this god all the sudden restore favor in mankind? I have made assumptions to the answers of those questions, but learn to tell a story you amateur screenwriting hacks!
This movie stars (ha what a joke) Dennis Quaid and Lucas Black as a father and son who own the dingy diner connected to an auto repair shop. For some reason Dennis Quaid keeps getting worse at acting over his latest projects. The last good movie he made was The Rookie in 2002.
Legion also features a stereotype black character played by the always fun to insult horrible actor Tyrese Gibson. Heading up the cast with the best overall performance is Paul Bettany. He was a convincing leader as the angel Michael commanding the rebellion against the destruction of Earth. He was the only strong positive in this film.
The acting in Legion overall is some of the worst I have seen from a collective cast in a long time. Lucas Black (Friday Night Lights) was so horrible he could have been recast by a stuttering monkey and I would have been more pleased.
Tyrese...I don't even think I should get into how much I hated his character in this movie. But let's just say if I had a box of Kleenex, a children's book, and four strawberries, I would find a way to manipulate those objects like Macgyver to kill him so I would never have to see him act again.
There were so many coincidental unrealistic elements in this movie I could not even believe what I was seeing sometimes. A perfect example is when the evil angel Gabriel is harassing Lucas Black's character as he is fleeing in a car with the now un-pregnant girl Charlie and her newborn child. To shake off the able to fly creature, Lucas decides to crash the car at speeds over 70 MPH.
Of course, this works perfectly and everyone is only mildly injured after the high speed crash. Even the infant born just hours before didn't sustain any injury in the rollover crash. Do they show the baby surviving? Nope, Charlie just walks over and says something along the lines of, "The baby is fine."
Another absolutely moronic ridiculous plot twist comes when literally hundreds, if not thousands, of angelic creatures are pouring to the diner where the people are trying to protect the expecting mother. The creatures are just beginning to penetrate the diner's defenses. Suddenly, they all retreat into the darkness without a glance back. Paul Bettany explains, "They were testing our strength, now they will test our weakness."
WHAT!? The angels were literally just overrunning the diner's weak defenses, just moments away from getting near enough to slay the almost defenseless pregnant Charlie, and they leave? The god this movie speaks of is obviously the Obama of making good choices. He has his angels retreat on the cusp of victory, to test their weakness?! If the angels would have go through and murdered everyone in the diner at that moment the movie would have been 46 times better.
Overall, the story was intriguing but since the author of Where's Waldo wrote the script (wait, didn't those books have zero words?) the narrative was delivered like a plane crash. The acting was horrible (except from Bettany) and I hope filmmakers start to finally realize that Dennis Quaid, Lucas Black, and Tyrese should not be cast in movies ever again. Unless it is a parody or documentary about bad actors.
I have heard people say that after seeing this movie they realized all the good parts were in the trailers, so it was spoiled for them already. The contents in the trailer weren't even that compelling. After seeing the movie, those were not the best scenes because there really were none except the closing credits.
If you have already wasted your money on this movie I honestly feel bad for you. I know when I walked out of the theater I considered asking Carmike Cinema or Sony Pictures for my money back.
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